China Day 4: Arts, sugared candies and Modern Sky festival starts dinging

This was a day to take off for Summer Palace, also protected by the UNESCO World Heritage site and also a wonderful place to enjoy the typical Chinese nature. I will let some of my pictures speak here…

Summer Palace with Tomoko.

Summer Palace

….and just give 3 highlights of the day:

Highlight No.1:

What amazed me here in the Summer palace among different arts and crafts shops was the beauty of Chinese fine art. The painter can draw your name using objects of nature, like bamboos, flowers and animals - all in different colors. Looks so amazing! I was standing there for a while thinking whether to buy this tempting masterpiece with my name drawn, but then decided to be practical…my name is so long after all. Though I could have taken just a letter A...L

Highlight No.2:

The traditional Chinese candies: they came exactly on time in the middle of visiting the Summer Palace and being half hungry. So, sweet, so fruity (like in The Crash song “Sugared”) and so lovely way of eating: taking one by one from the stick. Remind me of my childhood.

The Crash - Sugared

Higlight No. 3:

Modern Sky Festival starts TODAY and HERE:

When: October, 2 – 4

Where: Haidian Park, Beijing, China

Stages: 4 (Modern Stage, Sky Stage, Badhead Stage, E-Stage)

Through the language barriers to pleasant atmosphere and green, lovely nature, low hierarchical level between people, journalists and musicians and warm Chinese crowd, enjoying, listening and thoughtfully thinking of the music they get and reacting properly to what they like. That was my first impression after entering Modern Sky festival at Haidian Park on its first day.

I have been to many European festivals and foreign music gigs and usually the procedures for accredited journalists are more or less the same. At least you expect them to speak English with you. Here it was a bit different, though I don’t mean worse. I was telling them at the VIP entrance that I have applied as a journalist, but nobody understood me. What I understood somehow by their gestures was that I have to call somebody. I called to the person not knowing who it was, it was just his number mentioned somewhere on their mailing lists (and good I had taken that number). The person picked up the phone, but couldn’t speak English either (though he was saying in English: “I don’t speak English”). After that I had nothing to do, but to find a translator for me and after that the situation started to proceed. I immediately got to know the responsible person as he appeared in the gates and after showing my passport they at least recognized me. However, they didn’t want to give me the media pass, telling that I will not need it and just “Enjoy the festival!”. But after insisting on the right to take pictures of musicians in front, I got the pass. Finally!

After this little incident my impression wasn’t spoiled as nobody treated me bad, I just took it as another experience with the problem of language. As well as I realized how informal are Chinese even in festivals where you as a journalist can go in front and take photos through the same gate as musicians go and moreover, there is no limit of photo taking. Basically, you are allowed to stay full time of the band’s performance unlike European gigs where it’s usually for the first 3-4 songs. That was something what surprised me in a positive way and gave some cultural differences regarding festival and concert management cultures in different world areas.

To be continued with a detailed report on Day 1, 2 and 3 in a special Gigs/Festivals category. Coming soon….